Wish you knew how well your Facebook or Instagram ads are doing? You’re not alone.
I’ve met countless small business owners who tell me they “boosted a post” or “ran some ads,” but when I ask how those ads performed, the answers get fuzzy.
Running ads without looking at the right numbers is like driving without a fuel gauge or GPS. You may move forward, but you don’t really know if you’re making progress—or running out of gas.
Thus, I was eager to ask Dhruv Vohra, who leads the small and medium business group at Meta Asia Pacific, how SMBs should measure success with their ads.
His advice was refreshingly simple: start with basics before building towards more advanced metrics. Let us now look at the highlights from our discussion.
Which Meta Ad Metrics Matters?
Advertising feels exciting when the numbers start rolling in. You see impressions climbing, likes trickling in, maybe a few comments and some shares. It’s tempting to think: “Great! My ad is working!”
Here’s the catch—none of those surface stats tell you if your business is actually earning from the money you’ve put in.
This is the real danger for small businesses. It’s easy to celebrate the noise and miss the signal. Without a clear sense of what success looks like, you’ll keep running ads that look busy but don’t bring results.
Dhruv commented that “If you’re first time advertisers, you have to start from the basics. So think about cost per purchase, CPP or cost per lead, which we also call CPL.”
Those are the numbers that matter. Not the applause, not the reach, not even virality, but the cost of getting someone to buy or sign up.
Cost per Purchase and Cost per Lead
Cost per purchase (CPP) and cost per lead (CPL) are the two simplest but most important measurements for first-time advertisers.
CPP shows how much you spend to get one customer to buy. On the other hand, CPL shows how much you spend to get one person to sign up, register, or enquire.
As Dhruv’s highlighted earlier, new advertisers should focus on these numbers first before worrying about anything else.
Imagine you’re a small retailer selling home décor. You run a campaign with a budget of $3,000 for the month. From this campaign, you generate 60 leads — people who filled in your form or subscribed to your updates.
That means your CPL is $50 ($3,000 ÷ 60 leads). Out of those 60 leads, 12 end up buying from you. That means your CPP is $250 ($3,000 ÷ 12 purchases).
Now let’s say each customer who bought spent an average of $300 in revenue. 12 customers at $300 each brings in $3,600 in sales. Given your $3,000 ad spend, that’s a slim margin and may not be sustainable once you factor in inventory and overheads.
But if those same 12 customers each spent $500, you would have earned $6,000—a clear win with room to reinvest in more ads.
This is why CPP and CPL matter. They help you to see if your ads are sustainable, profitable, or draining your budget.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate, or CTR, is another basic number worth watching. It tells you how many people who saw your ad actually clicked on it.
If 1,000 people see your ad and 30 click through, your CTR is 3 percent.
As Dhruv explained, “Click-through rates are an important indicator of the health of your ads.”
Hence, a strong CTR shows that your creative is working. People are stopping, paying attention, and taking the next step.
On the flip side, a weak CTR means something is off, either in the message, the visuals, or the audience targeting.
Let’s say a small online fashion store runs a $1,500 campaign that reaches 50,000 people. Out of those, 1,000 click through to the website. That is a CTR of 2 percent.
If the owner compares two ads side by side and finds that one ad has a CTR of 4 percent while the other has a CTR of 1 percent, they’ll know which to keep investing in.
Think of CTR as the pulse of your campaign. It does not tell you about profit, but it shows whether your ads are alive and engaging, or flat and being ignored.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
Return on ad spend, or ROAS, is the number that tells you if your ads are truly profitable. It measures how much revenue you earn for every dollar you spend on advertising.
Dhruv said, “Eventually take the journey towards a north star… You’ll hear this as ROAS, which is basically return on ad spend.”
Here’s how it works. If you spend $1,000 on ads and generate $4,000 in sales, your ROAS is 4. For every dollar spent, you earned four back.
If you spend $1,000 and bring in $800, your ROAS is 0.8, which means you are losing money.
To sum it, here’s what Dhruv had to say, “The basics would be look at cost per lead, cost per purchase, and click-through rate, but the real North Star metric is ROAS or return on ad spend. So you know, what is your real ROI? Start with CPP, CPL and then adjust based on your business’ breakeven point, and take the journey towards ROAS.”
Think of ROAS as the scoreboard. CPP, CPL, and CTR tell you pieces of the story. ROAS tells you the final outcome.
A positive ROAS shows your ads are not just engaging people, but generating enough revenue to cover costs and grow your business.
Testing as Part of Measurement
Testing is not just a nice-to-have. It is part of measuring whether your ads will succeed before you commit your full budget.
Dhruv advised, “The first thing to remember is that they need to test before the mega sales day period starts, so that they know exactly what they’re executing on during the sales days.”
He added, “Do AB tests two to three creative formats or offers. I think allocating 20% of your total budget for testing is a good practice, and you run these tests for three to seven days to ensure reliable results, and then you act on those tests. But testing has to be an integral part of marketing in this day and age.”
Here is an example. A local skincare brand has $5,000 to spend on ads in a month. Instead of putting all of it behind one creative, they set aside $1,000 to test three versions of their offer.
One ad highlights a discount, another features a product demo, and the third focuses on customer reviews.
After a week, the results show that the demo video generated twice as many clicks and conversions as the others.
By testing first, the brand can put the remaining $4,000 behind the winning creative with confidence. This reduces wasted spend and increases the chance of stronger returns.
Testing is research. It tells you what works with your audience before you double down.
Attribution and Adjusting
Attribution tells you which ads, audiences, and touchpoints are driving results. Without it, you may think a campaign is underperforming when in fact the sales are just coming through another channel later.
Dhruv shared an example from the field. “They also had the right attribution model in place so they could seamlessly put resources where they had the maximum impact. So I would say in summary, test early so that you’re absolutely ready. Use as many creative formats as possible to tell your authentic story. Trust AI and our automation tools to find the right audience for you, for the right goals, sales leads, or awareness. And then measure so that you can adjust and calibrate your budget mix on the goal.”
Here is how this works in practice with this hypothetical example.
A boutique fitness studio runs ads across both Instagram Stories and Facebook Feed. Attribution data shows that while the final conversions mostly happen after people see the Feed ads, the Stories are what got most users interested first.
Without that view, the studio might cut Stories off, and lose a big driver of awareness. With attribution in place, they know to keep both formats and simply adjust spend between them.
Conclusion
Measuring your Facebook and Instagram advertising results does not need to be complicated.
Start with the basics: cost per purchase (CPP) and cost per lead (CPL). These give you the clearest view of what you are paying to get real results.
Keep an eye on click-through rate (CTR) to know if your creative is doing its job. As you grow more confident, use return on ad spend (ROAS) as your North Star to see the true return on your investment.
